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John's thoughts - Summer 2017

Hello fellow 1911-lovers,

I would like to welcome you to the Summer 2017 issue of our electronic magazine (or our E-zine, as we like to call it).

Summer has arrived upon us all, and it arrived with a huge turmoil, caused by a company all of us have relied in the past. I am speaking about Photobucket (PB), which 100,000,000 internet users have used in the past, to store our pictures we wanted shown on the internet.

As most of you already know, in the beginning of June, PB has decided to forbid you using their site, for the reason it was started and for the reason you subscribed to it. So you can no more link to your pictures you have saved on their servers, in order to show them in your posts in M1911.ORG Forums Site, or in your blog, or wherever. If you want to use your pictures in that way, from now on, you have to subscribe to a special PB program, which will cost you $400 per year!!!

Practically, PB's decision has brought down millions of sites overnight. In millions of sites, all over the world, pictures owned by those 100,000,000 members were replaced with a silly image, which urged their owners to subscribe to the $400 PB plan, if they wanted to share their pictures with the rest of internet users.

Now, I am all for free business decisions, and there is nothing wrong for a company trying to make money, but PB decision is nothing sort of an extortion and a blackmail, for the following reasons:

1. Every single one of their 100,000,000 members had originally subscribed to PB, to share their pictures with the rest of the internet. That's why they created their (free or paid) accounts, that's why they uploaded their pictures in PB servers. Blocking your member pictures, without a prior notice is nothing sort of Mafia practice.

2. Even paid members pictures were blocked initially. That means that while you and I have paid for the service PB used to offer (sharing pictures on the internet) all of a sudden your pictures were blocked. Obviously, they figured out that this could have cost them millions, if one (or more) of their paid members decided to take them to court, so they changed their policy and pictures from paid accounts are now visible again. But when your paid period expires, you can no longer share your pictures, even if you renew it, only the $400 plan will allow you to show your pictures stored in PB servers. Again, PB created a dead-end for its customers. Again, an extortion of the worst kind.

Not only did PB blocked its members pictures from showing on the net, but they also blocked your ability to download your albums from their site. I have reported that issue to PB support, at the beginning of July, their answer was that it is a known issue and their tech support was trying to solve it, but we are practically in the middle of August and the issue is still not solved. The only way you can download your pictures, is to do it one by one. Not only that, but PB has also removed members videos from their sites, even though they had promised that all your assets you have uploaded to their servers are safe for you to recover. Obviously, that doesn't include your videos.

Somehow, I think this PB decision will mean the end of the company. And it was a stupid decision to start with. In today's world, with less than $400 a year, you can rent a virtual private server, in a hosting company, with several Gigabytes of free space, unlimited bandwidth, with 24/7 support and host not only your pictures, but whatever else you want in it. Why would you pay them money to a company, who not only never warned you about its change of plans, but also is keeping you from downloading your assets? Would any of PB members trust PB again, to leave their pictures in their servers and pay them $400 per year, only to share their pictures on the net? I do not think so.

Even if you look at PB decision, from a business perspective, it is nothing sort of idiotic. The reason? Here it is:

PB has 100,000,000 members, as they say. If they were to charge a minimum fee, say $10 a year, to allow their members to share their pictures on the net, from PB servers, I am sure that 90% of their members will gladly pay that fee. Which means that PB would be able to collect one BILLION US$ every year, from the majority of their members. Charging $400 for this service, means that they have to convince 2,500,000 PB members, to subscribe to their plan and pay $400 per year, in order to make that billion of US$. I do not see it happening, so obviously they'll never make that money. It's obvious that whoever came up with that idea and their CEO who approved it, never did their math right.

Right now, as I am typing this, PB members are closing their accounts at an alarming rate. PB is not doing anything to liberate your pictures from their servers (you can still not download complete albums and you can not even see your videos), they have stopped answering posts in their Facebook page and all they are doing is emailing people trying to convince them to pay $400 for their sharing plan. Well, good luck, too late for this guys! You have lost your customers confidence and that is not easy to bring back.

In our Forums Site, we have a discussion on this PB problem. You can find some solutions too, about how to continue seeing the blocked pictures and how to download your albums, in that discussion. It's here:

Moving on from the PB decision and the mess it created, it appears that the firearms market is in turmoil too. Following a year with incredible sales (Obama = the best guns salesman in the world), 2017 appears to be a very slow year for the guns industry. From the stats I read on the internet, all gun-related businesses are suffering for a huge slow-down of their sales. While the first quarter of 2017 was slower than the equivalent of the previous year, it was still a good one. But the second quarter of 2017, companies saw an abysmal decline of their sales. The third quarter, accoding to most business insiders is not going to be any better and everyone is hoping that the last quarter of the year, will be somewhat good, due to the holiday sales etc.

Let's just hope that things will go well for our friends in this business.

One more thing: M1911.ORG has started sending out our Monthly Newsletter, informing you of all the latest news in our Organization. While there were some members who were bothered by it, the huge majority of our membership welcomed our Newsletter, as a means to stay updated with what's happening in our Community.

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Once more, let me thank you for reading our E-zine, for being members of our Forums Site and for liking M1911.ORG.

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